Pain, spice and spring in Istanbul

Welcome back to AL-MONITOR Istanbul.

This week, pain sets the tone. In Turkish, “aci” means both pain and spice — from what is felt to what is tasted. In Beyoglu, two young artists trace how pain settles into the body, returning in quiet waves; across the city, spring arrives on schedule, softening the edges as tulips bloom with almost defiant regularity. At the table, Hatay’s layered cuisine reminds us that what burns can also bind, lingering longer than expected.

If you want to receive this newsletter or our other new weekly City Pulse newsletters — for Doha, Dubai and Riyadh — sign up here.

Thanks for reading,

Nazlan (@NazlanEr on X)

P.S. Have tips on Istanbul’s culture scene? Send them my way at nertan@al-monitor.com.

Also, don’t forget to follow us on Instagram: @citypulsealm

1. Leading the week: Moment of pain

“The hole in the sky” by Asli Çelikel (Photo courtesy of Offgrid and the artist)

Independent art space Offgrid, known for pairing unorthodox young artists in tightly curated duos, takes a quiet but stubborn position on pain with its latest exhibition, “A Matter of a Moment,” by Asli Celikel and Kubra Su Yildirim.

Curated by Melis Bektas, the show rests on a simple but uneasy premise: pain is not a chapter you close, but a rhythm you learn to live with. In a culture increasingly fixated on recovery — faster, cleaner, preferably Instagrammable — this lands as a quiet provocation.

“‘A Matter of a Moment’ approaches pain not simply as an individual emotional state, but as a shared experience of our time — one that is increasingly rendered invisible, yet continues to seep into every layer of life,” Bektas told Al-Monitor. “One of the exhibition’s greatest strengths is that it neither dramatizes pain nor attempts to resolve it. Instead, it turns its attention to the altered inner rhythm that follows loss, as well as to objects, absences and silence.”

Yildirim’s paintings lean into this elasticity. Cartoon figures hover somewhere between presence and disappearance, their tension rendered in soft but insistent gestures. Celikel’s photographs, by contrast, are all restraint — the aftermath rather than the event, the trace rather than the wound. Together, they suggest that what hurts most is rarely the moment itself, but its echo.

A scene from the exhibition (Photo by Baris Ozcetin/Offgrid)

Accompanied by a subtle sound design from composer Yagiz Oral, known for his work with the Istanbul-based experimental music collective Simena, the show unfolds like a low, persistent hum. What emerges is less a statement than a recognition. Pain, the exhibition suggests, is not an interruption of life’s flow but part of its texture — a quiet undercurrent in a city, and perhaps a world, that prefers to move on too quickly.

Where: Offgrid Art Project, Imam Adnan Sokak No: 6, Beyoglu
When: Until May 24

2. Word on the street: Aci

The full table (Hatay Medeniyetler Sofrası Facebook)

In Turkish, the word for pain is also the word for hot spices — the kind that arrives quickly, then lingers. Few kitchens understand this duality better than Hatay Civilizations Table, both in its branch in the restless setting of Taksim and its calmer outpost in Nispetiye. Rooted in Antakya’s layered culinary tradition, the menu trades brute heat for complexity: pepper pastes, zahter, pomegranate molasses, rich kebabs and the great kunefe.

Where: Taksim: Katip Mustafa Celebi Mah., Istiklal Cad. No: 39, Beyoglu
Nispetiye: Nispetiye Cad. No: 94, Besiktas

3. Istanbul diary

“The Dead Fly” by Johan Creten (Photo courtesy of artist and Pilevneli)

Pilevneli Dolapdere art gallery brings Belgian artist Johan Creten back to Istanbul with “The Dead Fly,” in which a monumental bronze sculpture transforms the fly into a reclining, almost human form, meditating on mortality and transformation. Until May 9.

The 45th Istanbul Film Festival opens with Isabel Coixet’s “Three Goodbyes” and runs a program spanning festival hits, new voices and classics across the city’s cinemas. Expect talks with Anders Danielsen Lie, a masterclass by Mike Figgis and honorary awards for Nilufer Aydan and Gianfranco Rosi between April 9 and April 19.

At the newly founded Artroom in Kadikoy (Caferaga Mah., Keresteci Aziz Sok. No: 41/A), “The White Rabbit Was Right All Along” turns Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland into a spatial puzzle where movement repeats and access remains just out of reach. Curated by Seda Celik, the exhibition layers works to explore the gap between what is visible and what can be reached.

Save the date: April 15-19. CI Bloom returns as the city’s spring gallery gathering, bringing leading names together in a lighter format than its autumn counterpart. A quick way to see where the scene — and the market — is heading.